evolving and ever changing reputations of your presidents. and the presidents makes a fast engrossing read. read about how noted presidential historians rank the best and worst chief executives, from george washington to barack obama. c-span's the president's is now available as a hard cover or e-book today at c-span.org/the presidents, or wherever books are sold. >> up next, education secretary betsy dev betsy devos talks about the united states education. both administration officials appeared at the recent "wall

street journal" cfo conference here in washington, d.c. [ applause ] secretary, thank you for being here with us today. >> thanks, lauren, it's a pleasure. >> i talked to a lot of companies, heads of hr and other executives and they all talk about the skills shortage. and it's not only about low unemployment. this was coming up six years ago when unemployment was around 9%. they tell us they can't find the people they need for the work that needs to get done. clearly there's some kind of a breakdown. sometimes it's about soft skills, technical skills. tell us where you think that break down might be. >> i think it's sort of across the board. it starts with k-12 education and the fact for too many young people they're not beginning to

think about what next until late high school. and that, frankly, is i think too late. i believe we have to start exposing students as early as early middle school to a variety of opportunities and pathways and giving them the opportunity to hear from and experience what some of those things might be like to give them a broader view for what might come after high school. and high schools -- k-12 in general is simply walled off in too many ways from higher ed, from a traditional four-year experience or a community college or a technical experience, and we need to really be intentional about taking those walls down, taking those silos down and for business in particular, i think there's been a giant silo between business and education for too long.

and i'm seeing now many places where the communities have really come together and business and industry leaders are introducing themselves to educators and vice versa and saying how can we work together to mean our long-term needs for this community. >> i see a lot of those kinds of partnerships popping up and i think it's because many companies realize government is not going to do it all or we can't rely on the government to do this kind of training. and there's a lot of innovation happening right now which is exciting. what do you think the government can do to facilitate more of that. >> there are some things we can do on the margins at the federal level. i think states have a much larger role to play in this regard, but we have advanced a few ideas that we think will help to provide young people

different opportunities, pell grants today are not available short-term certification or credential programs. we think that this is a good step to look at expanding those opportunities. the reauthorization of perkins 5 provides states a lot of flexibility in creating new onramps for students in career and technical education. and we're encouraging that this is a -- with the perkins 5 reauthorization, this is a really important point where -- point in time where industry can come together with educators to create something new and different. >> i think it authorizes $1.3 billion in spending for career and technical education. >> right. and there's not been i don't think as much -- enough focus on

or if -- the federal government is going to invest in higher education, there should be more focus on supporting the multitude of pathways and recognizing that for a lot of students today coming out of high school, the opportunities are great for a high-paying challenging career from which they can grow and advance while not taking on a bunch of student debt. and yet we continually talk about four-year college or university as the past that students should really -- >> the messages around that are very mixed or sort of confusing to parse out. on the one hand, student debt is at a record level, i think it's 1 1/2 trillion dollars right now. there are a lot of people who start college and drop out and get nothing for that investment. on the other hand, the college premium, the amount your wages

will be higher than somebody who just graduated from high school is higher than it's ever been. there's a good reason why people think of college as the best next step. but do you think there are too many young people going to college today? >> i think there are too many young people that are starting a traditional college with no idea of what they really want to pursue and they are taking on student debt. and after a year and a half or two years they're dropping out and having to start over with nothing to show for it. with $1.5 trillion in student debt, it is an important time to take a step back and look at how we can message differently and encourage young people to explore what they're -- what they're really wired up to do much earlier on in their life. and not wait until graduating high school to say, okay, well, i guess the next thing for me is that four-year college. i have no idea what i'm going to do or want to do. but, again, really winding it

back and helping students know and understand what their ennate aptitudes are and getting a good idea of what they might want to pursue is something that communities have to take responsibility for in a major way. i just visited a really interesting place in texas last week. it's a very large industrial construction company that is not having nearly enough success in finding workers who are skilled for the jobs that they have. they have welcomed veterans, they have welcomed unemployed. i've met a number of previously unemployed young women, one of whom had earned a four-year college degree and couldn't get hired anywhere. they went through a 16-week program and now they're earning a great wage. they have every opportunity to continue to build on those skills and advance in this

company with no end in sight in terms of what they might be able to do and that's just one of many places that i've seen really thinking creatively and taking matters really into their own hands because they have just not been able to get the skills they need to do the jobs they have. >> right. and we are seeing big companies saying we're not going to require a college degree anymore. google has done that. some other big tech companies. i think firms are getting the message both because they can't hire if they keep their requirements so high and also because some jobs simply don't require that kind of background and that kind of debt. i do want to ask you given that our audience here control it is pursestrings, basically, what do you think companies should be doing -- what is their responsibility when it comes to figuring out how to prepare their workforce or the workforce? >> i think it's an opportunity to think differently about the

kind of workers that your company needs today and in the future and to look creatively within your own community as to how you can solve the problem or meet the needs of your business both today and tomorrow. i'm sure you've all heard the prediction of kindergarteners starting this year, they'll graduate from high school in 2030 and 85% of their jobs have not yet been created. so this is a -- this is a really important period of time to really approach things differently than we have before. and i've worked with enough individuals in the financial world to understand that sometimes that's -- that might not -- that might be a little more difficult to think about and to do, but it is i think a really important opportunity to work more closely with your own communities and look at ways

that you can partner with educators today. more and more educators are open to and cognizant of the fact that education fundamentally has to change. but they need encouragement just like i think you can be encouraging of them to really take the steps to come together and solve those problems together. i just -- i know that ivanka trump has been working with a number of large employers to advance the pledge to the american worker and today she just announced that over 10 million commitments to expanding opportunities for current workers have been -- the pledges have been made. again, there are so many opportunities today but we have to think more creatively about how to meet those needs and look at the development of human capital in the same way that we

look at capital investments of other goods and, you know, equipment within a business. >> on that note, i want to pull up our poll question for the audience. in the current fiscal year, my company has made significant new investments, kept spending about the same, and c, decreased it. we'll take a look back in a minute to see where the results end up. we are -- i recently wrote a story that included some statistics that i hadn't been aware of before which is that the u.s. on a list of oecd companies, we are second in last in terms of our government spending on career and continuing education. should we be putting more money into most secondary education specifically for career training? i know we have the perkins act,

that's $1.3 billion. should we be putting a lot more in? >> it's an important question for congress to wrestle with. this administration has been very supportive of really supporting the multiple pathways to successful adult life in careers and i think that -- i think that we do need to examine where the resources are going from the federal level and what messages we're sending either overtly or subliminally about what we value. and we should be valuing a lot more types of opportunities than we have sent signals for in the last several decades. certainly four-year college and university is a good answer for a lot of young people, but for a lot of them, it might not be the answer today. it might be -- it might be for them five or ten years from now.

we really need to, i think, embrace learning as a life-long pursuit, not one that is episodic and that we check off the box by the time we're 21 or 22 or a few years older with a graduated degree. >> i agree. baked into our educational system is -- just kind of like the way we think about this issue as a society is idea that education is over by the time you're 25. we don't have a lot of resources for people who are continuing and improving your skills in your current job is so critical. i think a lot about how we can encourage that in people, how companies can encourage it and how we can have policies that encourage it. right now we see this proliferation of -- there's a lot of innovation in the world of education, educational technology, we have boot camps. we have online education

platforms, nano degrees, certificates in pretty much anything under the earth. there's linked in learning. there are all of these places where people can get additional training. there's not a lot of oversight and standards for them and it mirrors the for-profit education system where most of these companies have a profit motive and there's not a lot of oversight on quality or standards. and when i talk to employers, they don't know -- they don't recognize these credentials, they don't know how to value them and that's very frustrating for workers who have gone and gotten them. in this wild west of a situation right now, where can government step in to help kind of manage this process of innovation or provide some oversight? >> well, i think the role federally is to provide as wide a boundary that is feasible and possible particularly if federal

resources are following some of these efforts. but i think it's really important to ensure the most innovation and creativity that the -- the opportunity for it to develop appropriately and robustly. to let the market work to the greatest extent possible and on the other hand look to some of the education innovators who are having great success as validated by the marketplace. are they graduates of whatever degree or certification program getting hired and are they advancing in their careers? well, they should be highlighted and more people will emulate them. ones that are not particularly effective, probably won't be very long-lived. clearly where federal resources are involved, there have to be appropriate boundaries and, you know, that is i think an

important piece. but i think we have to -- we have to allow for a lot more creativity and innovation to enter the education world because we have -- we have not kept up with the rest of the world in terms of opportunity. >> yeah, i think we'll have to -- we'll end up at a place where there's a little more transparency. i hear a lot there workers who say i wanted to get a degree or i wanted to get some training in digital marketing, it's always digital markets, because i think it seems easier than data science and people are familiar with marketing. and so they'll google it and they'll come -- the top three results, they'll choose one of those programs and sometimes they're spending a thousand dollars which can be tough for a lot of people and have no idea whether or not they're going to get the outcome that they're looking for. i see a lot of vendors selling directly to corporations but i think there's a much better

vetting process, hopefully. i want to take a look at our poll results. 50% say they've made significant new investments in employee training, 50% keeping it about the same and no one is decreasing their investment in training. that's good news. >> that is. i would be interested to know what the plan is for next year and beyond, if that's going to continue to increase. >> i do think there are some other countries that are trying very creative things. france started a program where they're each worker or person of working age is giving 500 euros to put towards their training that they can spend that year or save it up to about 10 years or so. you see countries experimenting with how do we invest in the notion of life-long learning. >> exactly. and i really think that we could benefit from learning what switzerland has done in terms of

apprenticeship opportunities. it was really interesting for me to learn when visiting there that almost 70% of their high school students are in some kind of an apprenticeship. they're earning while they're still learning in high school, and they can go onto any one of 230 different apprenticeships as decided by the can tons and businesses jointly. they're constantly dropping off apprenticeships that are no longer relevant, adding new ones and they have perfected a system of life-long education that is very permeable. you can come into it and go out of the formal education program at any point in your life. and the notion of apprenticeship is -- i think we have a pretty narrow view of it here. my view was broadened when i

realized that the ceo of ubs started as an apprentice in a bank. there are very few sectors where earning and learning wouldn't work in some way and i think, you know, business can be challenged to think more broadly about how that might look in your own company and i know that there are companies that are informally starting these kinds of programs today i think as there's more interest generated, there will be more opportunity to come together with businesses of similar size or scale or focus and develop some more of these opportunities. >> apprenticeship is one of those rare bipartisan issues. >> we're going to take some questions from the audience. >> questions for secretary devos? >> question over here. >> good. >> hi.

>> hi. >> very interesting, thank you. my name is christina. wondering what advice you would give a pending student entering the college, university years and what kind of -- or what kinds of programs you think are right now applicable to that person looking at what to do versus apprenticeship, school, curriculum in terms of what the output is and the job market. >> i think that would depend on the individual and what he or she was interested in pursuing. there's no end to opportunity -- the opportunity for the types of programs that one can pursue and i think for a lot of young people, there's almost too many and trying to sort through that is challenging. and i think that's another opportunity for the k-12 years is to start at a younger age to talk about, you know, what kinds of things you might actually

have the innate skills to do. so i can't give you a very specific answer because it really would depend on the individual. >> tell us a little bit about how -- >> is there a process for that within the -- in terms of training and teaching the child what are the options out there? >> well, i know that there are some places that have begun to look at this more seriously. i think about a school i visited in tennessee. it was a really multifaceted career and technical high school that was -- that had a lot of different opportunities for students who were both going to pursue a traditional four-year experience in engineering and/or some other subject areas but also ones in career and technical. but in i believe it was in eighth grade, all of the students in that high school did some kind of an aptitude test.

so they would have a better understanding of what their innate gifts and talents were and how they might be able to actually develop them and what kinds of vocations would be -- would line up with those aptitudes. i think a lot more schools, a lot more communities might look seriously at that to help students know and understand at an earlier age what some -- what's some of the things they're innately good at doing. >> secretary, tell us your thoughts on immigration and the role that it plays here. a businessman that i spoke with who does a lot of business in china and the united states says that he thinks that the united states should staple a green card on the back of every diploma that it hands out to every grad student that comes from aboard. we want them to stay here. don't go home and compete with us. do you buy that idea? >> i think immigration and the

future of what immigrants can bring and add to our country is of critical importance. our president clearly believes this and thinks this as well with the most recent proposal around immigration that deals specifically with international students. the focus has been on exceptional students and students coming with -- and maintaining high levels of academic achievement would have an opportunity to apply before they've graduated for a green card. if they have -- if they can demonstrate a job waiting for them when they graduate, we want them to stay here. we want them to contribute and i think that this is a really important policy that we should all be embracing. >> any other last questions? right here.

>> you touched upon this a little bit in the previous discussion. but does it concern you and what's your perspective in terms of the tipping point we might be reaching in the u.s. where an undergrad is going to school and spending a quarter of a million dollars to get a degree and how the u.s. maintains competitiveness with other nations in terms of how that evolves. a guy that's got three kids, i'm sitting there thinking about the future and how the hell i'm going to help pay for three kids to go through school. i think we're getting to a tipping point. >> i couldn't agree more. and i think the cost -- clearly the cost of higher education in the u.s. has gone up at a greater rate. and there's lots of theories as

to what has fuelled that but i think for students going forward, giving a lot more information about what they're buying is of critical importance. helping them become a lot more financially literate as they enter a higher education program. one of the things that we're doing as we're reforming and reframing the federal student aid platform is to put on -- one site, the college scorecard, the program-level data for every higher ed institution. if you want to pursue -- if you think you want to pursue this type of program but you're considering four or five different schools, you'll be able to look at what the cost is for that program at each of those institutions and then also what your likely earning potential is like, two, five and ten years out based on data from people who have graduated from

those programs. i think this is going to be important information for prospective students to have. i also know that the reforms that we are advancing around accreditation are going to afford a lot more opportunities for creativity in higher education and the more -- the more opportunity there is there, the more that the -- ultimately i think the price is going to be -- start to come down because there's going to be more -- there are going to be better opportunities at lower costs advanced as a result of some of these reforms. >> one last one. here we go. right here. >> having -- >> tell us who you are. >> meredith jones with amazon web services. having been the beneficiary of

homeschooling, public school, private school, i see the value of device educational experiences. what can we expect to see with regard to more diversity in education, particularly in those formative years. >> well, that's a great question. and i am thrilled to be able to talk about our initiative to advance education freedom. i term it as education freedom and particularly for k-12 students. and we know that for a lot of kids, they are -- everybody is assigned based on your zip code, where you live, to your traditional public school. for too many of those students it's not working and the families don't have the option of moving somewhere else or paying the tuition for a private school. we are advancing this notion that parents should be empowered to make those decisions and if we're spending that money on those students to begin with,

let parents and students take that money to a school that's going to be the right fit for them. so the proposal is to establish a federal tax credit that individuals and corporations could voluntarily contribute to. states would decide whether they wanted to participate or not. no mandate from the federal level. not creating a new program to administer. if a state did elect to participate, they would be able to create a program or programs that would empower these students ultimately with a scholarship to choose the right fit for them educationally. so i've encouraged people to think more broadly about what that could look like the. because immediately those who are -- defend what is and defend the status quo will say it's taking money away from public schools. but, no, we think more broadly

about expanding career and technical education opportunities for high schoolers, course choice so you can take a language from the finest instructor living on the other side of the world or some other course that your school is not able to offer, or apprenticeship opportunities. think very broadly about how we can introduce different choices and different opportunities to really fit the needs of the wide range of learning styles and needs that students have. that is a proposal that's been introduced both in the house and the senate. both the bill sponsors and i are working hard for gaining support on that initiative. we think it's an important way to advance this notion that we should have a lot more freedom in education during those k-12 years. >> did i see one last question? way in the back here?

yeah, please. >> can you share your view of a university score? >> you're referring to the s.a.t. -- the recent -- >> yes. >> i think that -- >> can you tell us what that is for the general audience. >> and i'm not an expert in the s.a.t. test or anything. i think that anything that does not recognize students as individuals and treat them on their own merit is ill conceived and it ultimately will -- the downstream affect is not going to be what the original idea or intention is. what i think we need to be focused on is this notion of more education freedom so that we're not forcing all too many kids into a one size fits all

approach in their k-12 years. i think we sometimes focus solely on higher education and forget about the fact that high schools are -- 12th graders are graduating every single year, many of whom are ill prepared to enter the workforce or enter a four-year college or university or any other higher ed setting. in fact i would be really curious how much -- how many resources everyone who -- the companies that you represent here expend on essentially on remediation or preparation that many of these students should have had after coming through 13 years of formal education. so we -- i believe our focus needs to be on providing more freedom and more opportunities for students at those earlier

years and that we treat students as the individuals they are. >> standardizing testing like the s.a.t. have a role or is it too problematic and should we get rid of the s.a.t.? >> i think higher ed institutions clearly have a wide range of measures that they look at in their admissions process. but i think, you know, there's a lot about education in general that needs to change and i think we need to be open about having those conversations beginning with -- particularly with the k-12 years. >> thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you. take a deep breath. >> i'm sorry i'm late. >> if you don't know it, mick had an air travel disaster. canceled flight, up ended schedule. >> i thought if they